Policymakers may convince themselves it's so. School administrators, hired to sing from a state-issue hymnal, will say it's so.Any parent who pays attention will know it's not. "School accountability," as the term implies, is not about the students.From its birth in the 1980s — the immaculate conception in the mind of Ross Perot when tasked by Texas lawmakers — the cul...

Come on be serious! Teachers are paid with tax dollars. Schools provide a product (education) and many schools expend far too much per-pupil without the promised results. Taxpayers are entitled to know what they're getting in return.

This article condemns the current system, but fails to offer an alternative and leaves the reader to asssume Mr. Young wants to eliminate any semblence of school performance measures.

There was a time (before educator unions) when schools worked in partnership with the community...now they hold your child's education as ransom for ever-increasing educator salaries and benefits.

You're correct about one statement Mr.Young it isn't about the students.....you and all the other educrats stopped caring a long time ago.

Last edited by reasonable_doubt on February 15th, 2012, 7:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

After 10 years of watching the fiasco of CSAP tests - the monetary cost: hundreds of millions, the time cost: at least 6 weeks spent teaching the students how to properly take the tests, the two weeks actually spent taking the test, then the results come in 6 months later, after the kids have moved on to the next grade, the next school, the next town. My kids' education has taken a huge leap downwards, and for no apparent reason other than the ritual, mandatory bi-annual firing of the school principals as the scapegoats for a lack of parental involvement and support in their children's academic achievement.

There are many instant-result tests that are far better at judging student performance. Cheaper and far more useful. CSAP isn't about the kids. Its a political football.

Today, the big fight in K-12 education is over the diminishing tax dollars, with lobbyists pushing for private, for-profit online charter schools, raking off the public school money. Make a quick buck, and when the CSAP scores for the online schools come in far worse than the public schools, blame somebody else all the way to the bank.

The fact is, Colorado schools are gradating kids who don't have the skills necessary to succeed in college. The teachers, the administrators, and the union Judy Solano sleeps with are all failing us. We need more accountability, not less.

Yes, the CSAP system is flawed. But I also see flaws in the notion that a student's achievement should be measured primarily based on his progress over past personal performance. The student is being groomed to compete in the real world against other people, not just himself, so standards must be set accordingly. A sixth grader who improve his reading skill from third grade level to 5th grade level over the past year is progressing, yes, but is still failing by real world standards, and neither the student nor his teachers should rest on their accolades at that point. There is still work to be done.

Skill levels must be measurable and quantifiable, and each student needs to have a realistic idea of where he stands. Whoever conjured up that stupid notion of false self esteem should be taken out and shot. The kids are on to that nonsense.

The essence of government is when ordinary people get themselves appointed or elected to positions of power, use that power to make rules to dictate how other people must live their lives, and enforce those rules at the point of a gun.

reasonable_doubt wrote:Come on be serious! Teachers are paid with tax dollars. Schools provide a product (education) and many schools expend far too much per-pupil without the promised results. Taxpayers are entitled to know what they're getting in return.

This article condemns the current system, but fails to offer an alternative and leaves the reader to asssume Mr. Young wants to eliminate any semblence of school performance measures.

There was a time (before educator unions) when schools worked in partnership with the community...now they hold your child's education as ransom for ever-increasing educator salaries and benefits.

You're correct about one statement Mr.Young it isn't about the students.....you and all the other educrats stopped caring a long time ago.

Really? You honestly think you are getting an accurate assessment of "what you're getting in return"? Oh man that's rich - hey, I have a load of triple A rated mortgage backed securities to sell you!

Mr. Young does offer an alternative - ITBS. There are a handful of other alternatives that could also replace CSAP thus saving Colorado the $800 mill expense.

Most people I know that are against CSAP are not against school performance. These people do want the best education for their kids. However, as with most govt programs, the devil is in the details and the implementation of this performance measuring stick is laughable.

I do not disagree with your statement re: ever-increasing salaries and benefits.

It takes a lot of courage to stand up to a failed system and Mr. Young is doing just that. I would not classify him as no longer caring. Try to make some changes in your local district and see what you get. You'll be shocked at the amount of people who truly do not care...

Ctajm wrote:The fact is, Colorado schools are gradating kids who don't have the skills necessary to succeed in college. The teachers, the administrators, and the union Judy Solano sleeps with are all failing us. We need more accountability, not less.

Yes, the CSAP system is flawed. But I also see flaws in the notion that a student's achievement should be measured primarily based on his progress over past personal performance. The student is being groomed to compete in the real world against other people, not just himself, so standards must be set accordingly. A sixth grader who improve his reading skill from third grade level to 5th grade level over the past year is progressing, yes, but is still failing by real world standards, and neither the student nor his teachers should rest on their accolades at that point. There is still work to be done.

Skill levels must be measurable and quantifiable, and each student needs to have a realistic idea of where he stands. Whoever conjured up that stupid notion of false self esteem should be taken out and shot. The kids are on to that nonsense.

The 'fact' you refer to may be coming from industry, which complains that its new-hires lack basic skills at the same time it complains about high taxes, it may come from educrats in bed with industry by virtue of ever-escalating 'standards' for industry defined curricula, or it may come from the abysmal graduation rates in DPS in particular.

But to say that the CSAP is merely 'flawed' is absurd. When a test is given with no explanation of the reasoning, so-called, for correct answers or any review of where the student has gone wrong, the only result is the perception of punishment without reason.

And who defines this 'real world' you speak of? The petty tyrants in the business world? No thank you. If we lived in the imagined meritocracy which is so often propagandized, would it matter that someone learned from a parent, experience, a library, a private, or a public school?

In fact, the public schools are designed to keep kids out of the workplace and, ostensibly, out of trouble. Higher education serves much the same function with the 'criminally uneducated' institutionalized so they can have a big party and not get too upset that the plutocracy is making certain that its children maintain a position at the top.

"No offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed." --Clarence Darrow (quoted in Irving Stone's Clarence Darrow for the Defense, p.83)

My wife and I opted-out our daughter from CSAP since she was in fourth grade ... this spring she will be a graduating senior, a straight-A student who still experiences the joy of learning.

My advice to parents is to be brave, do what is best for your individual child, don't let the government bully you, and opt out of CSAP or CTAP or whatever it is they are calling it now.

Last week the Denver Post headlined this report: 'More Colorado graduates than ever not ready for college' ( http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_19911350 ). It is about as bottom-line as you can get ... after thirteen years of 'education reform' in public schools, almost a third of Colorado high school graduates are not even ready for college freshman English or math.

Yet despite evidence that the Bush-Spellings-Obama-Duncan-Romer-Owens-Ritter-Hickenlooper corporatized 'standards-based' accountability and charter education philosophy is such an obvious failure, you can still count on elite "we know what's best for you" representatives of the corporate governing class to defend the status quo.

We are coming up on two decades of the so-called "reform" movement being the prime directing policy in public education. Fourteen years of CSAP testing, of 'accountability' and 'standards' and quasi-privatization through charter schools has gotten us this: FAILURE.

The fact that high school graduates must go through remediation to be prepared for the freshman year at college is a bonfire of evidence that their formula is wrong. The educational establishment's notions for fixing the problem are predictably to double-down on more of the same.

What we need is a genuine revolution in public education. We need to stop degrading the teacher, put them back in charge and allow them the freedom to teach in their classrooms. We need to empower neighborhood schools and local school boards to decide how to educate the children in their charge -- in other words, tell the federal and state government educrats to take a hike. We need to stop the maniacal obsession with the idea that ALL students must go to college -- there are many, many alternative avenues for our young people besides taking on thousands of dollars of debt to get a degree that may not even provide them with a marketable skill. We need to stem the flow of public and private dollars into charter schools that cherry-pick students and still do not adequately educate students -- all public schools should have access to the same resources.

The bottom-line is that twelve years of school ought to be enough time to prepare the vast majority of students to live in the real world and to be prepared for whatever next step they chose to take. The "reform" status quo has failed miserably on this score. It is time to throw it out and start again with a program of common sense and focused on learning, learning, learning -- not on data, tracking and testing.